Written and directed by Quarxx, after realising he has died at the scene of a car crash, Nathan descends into the depths of hell, where he is doomed to experience the pain of tortured souls along the way. Starring: Arben Bajraktaraj, Hugo Dillon, Ophélia Kolb, Carl Laforêt, Manon Maindivide, Jérôme Paquatte and Sidwell Weber.
Occasionally, a film will elevate your expectations with its opening scene, luring you in, only to let you down with what follows, which is what you might find with Pandemonium. Everything about its initial scenes is excellent, the aesthetic and atmosphere are right on the money. It dives right into the themes of denial, acceptance and the idea of whether lives are judged on a moral scale. It has a fantastic, dark sense of humour and the tension and battle of wills between Arben Bajraktaraj’s Daniel and Hugo Dillon’s Nathan, is a genuine highlight.
Their performances in those first moments are top notch and encompass a wide, compelling range of emotion, as well as just being sincerely entertaining. However, as Pandemonium moves into the depths of hell, it becomes an unconnected anthology of sadism and misery. Especially as it chooses to firstly explore the story of Julia (Ophélia Kolb), who is devilishly sociopathic but also irritating. That sets up a strange change of tone, which then never finds its way back to smooth running.
Not only does the quality of the story continue to decline but the visual quality and direction are nowhere near as strong for the rest of the film. It’s a mixed bag, the movement and pacing feel problematic, and it starts to struggle to hold your attention. Sadly, there’s also no resounding finale to bring everything together, it devolves into quite nonsensical territory before the credits roll. It’s a shame as it had a lot of potential but it pushes aside its ethical and moral questions for something more simplistic.
Pandemonium starts out on brilliant footing but loses it way and with it, all the potential that it had. It sets out with a stellar landscape which perfectly captures a cold, isolated and unforgiving afterlife, portrayed excellently and with engaging personality by Arben Bajraktaraj and Hugo Dillon. Unfortunately, everything after that point is downhill, it never recaptures that spark and becomes a batch of strange, unusual and disappointing tales of death and grief.
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